This article was first published by Lindsey Redd on Medium. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been meeting with current and hopeful founders who want to become Y Combinator founders. They’re applying to the Winter 2024 batch, and naturally have a ton of questions about our experience applying and being accepted to YC. One of the main questions I get is “What was your interview experience like?” Of course, before there was the interview, there was the application. This is a story in and of itself that I’ll save for
Venture capital (VC) investment in African startups has seen a 33% increase compared to this time last year, according to gathered by The Big Deal. This follows similar reports of funding for African startups hitting new records in the first half of 2022. So far this year, more than 800 investors have contributed to at least one $100K+ startup deals on the continent. Investors have also been far more active than in previous years. For example, 250 firms made at least two investments (45% more than in 2021), and 60 partook
Y Combinator’s summer (S22) batch is notably different to its previous ones. Firstly, this batch kicked off with an in-person event – the first since the winter 2020 batch. Secondly, the summer cohort includes 240 companies, significantly fewer than the 414 companies in the winter 2022 cohort. And third, only eight startups in Africa got into the accelerator this summer compared to 24 from the previous batch, representing a 60% reduction. While the region represented about 6% of the entire winter batch, it’s 3% for this batch. When YC went
According to Forbes, Tech accelerator program, Y Combinator, has chosen venture capitalist Garry Tan as its fourth leader in its 17-year history. In January, the Y Combinator alum is set to replace the current president, Geoff Ralston, who served in this position since 2011. As a part of his new role, Tan is expected to step down from his role at Initalized Capital, an early stage venture capital firm he founded alongside Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian in 2012. “This is a community where people’s dreams, more or less, are fulfilled
